


the still point of the turning world

by Pepperdoken



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/pseuds/Pepperdoken
Summary: “What thefuck, Amano,” Uzume blurts out. “Did you fuckingtime travel?”
Relationships: Uchiha Uzume & Hyuuga Amano
Comments: 18
Kudos: 285
Collections: Dreaming of Sunshine Exchange 2020 A





	the still point of the turning world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DawningStar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/gifts).



The sound of her door opening rouses Uzume, but since it was accompanied with a familiar pulse of chakra she takes the time to stretch and yawn before dragging herself out of bed. It’s Amano, of course, and by the time she leaves her room he’s already poking through her fridge. 

“There’s leftover croquettes,” she tells him. 

Amano makes a wordless sound of acknowledgement and pulls the container out. He doesn’t complain about how they’re better fresh like he usually does, and when Uzume gets to the coffee maker… It’s already started, and Amano’s set a cup out beside it. 

Uzume stares at the cup. Amano usually leaves the coffee for her to start, but sometimes — after a bad mission, or ones that Amano had a close call on… 

He hasn’t looked at her yet, either. 

Surreptitiously, she activates her sharingan. He still looks exactly like he did before he left, but that doesn’t mean anything. If a healer is good enough there might not be any scars left, but the jutsu is still visible to the sharingan for weeks later, sometimes. 

She’s familiar with Amano’s chakra system. She has perfect memory of it, from the moment she’d woken her sharingan early in the second war right up until the spar they’d had the day before he’d left on his most recent mission. 

He is still absolutely, unmistakably, Amano — but that most recent glimpse of Amano’s chakra system is as different to the first sharingan memory she has of it as it is to the one she’s looking at now. 

“What the _fuck_ , Amano,” she blurts out. “Did you fucking _time travel?_ ” 

Amano finally turns to look at her, and she can immediately see why he hadn’t before. There’s something lost and aching in his eyes, and Uzume immediately knows she doesn’t want to know what put it there. 

There’s a reason that Uzume is glad that her mom is in the MP, that Uzume’s second priority in a fight — her first, if Amano isn’t on the same mission as her — is always herself. There’s always been something brittle about him, and she’s never known what would happen to him if Uzume or her mother died. 

That brittle part of him has shattered, now. 

“Come here,” she says softly, and almost is surprised at the speed that Amano obeys. _Almost_. He curls into her, pressing his face into the crook of her neck and wrapping his arms around her. 

“Have you reported yet?” she asks, long after the coffee has finished brewing, after his shoulders have stopped trembling and the silent tears dampening her shoulder have slowed. 

“No,” Amano murmurs. “I wanted to see you first.” 

It’s not quite the confirmation she'd been dreading, but Uzume has to fight down the urge to ask if she’d at least made the bastard who killed her earn her death. She really, _really_ doesn’t want to know — and it’s not going to happen again anyway, no matter what. 

“Okay,” Uzume says with a sigh. “It better not be happening in the next fifteen minutes, whatever it is,” she adds warningly. 

There’s a muffled snort, then Amano slowly pulls away. “We’ve got a couple of weeks, actually,” he says, and turns back to where he’d abandoned the leftovers on the counter. 

They move to Uzume’s tiny table, where she nurses a cup of coffee as he eats. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about the future he’s from, which… Uzume can completely sympathize with. “Were you sent back alone?” she asks instead, once he’s done eating. “I assume the Yondaime—” 

Amano shakes his head. “He wasn’t… available,” he replies in a delicate tone, and Uzume winces at the implications. “That’s one of the things that we’re going to need to prevent. And no, I didn’t come back alone, but… For the time being I’m the only one who will be in a position to do something.” 

“Oh?” Uzume asks. That _might_ mean Jiraiya, who… honestly Uzume would prefer to skip dealing with, if possible. There aren’t any other sealing specialists in the village that Uzume’s aware of, though, so if the person who came back with Amano isn’t the Yondaime or Jiraiya… She pauses, then narrows her eyes at him. “Is there a seal master in the academy? Is there an academy teacher out there who has no clue what’s about to hit them?” 

The smirk on Amano’s face is a shadow of what it usually is, but it’s real, and that’s all that matters. “What’s life without a little mystery?” he replies teasingly, and dodges the lazy kick she aims at him. 

“Get out of my apartment if you’re not going to tell me, you jerk,” she orders, setting her coffee cup to the side. If she heads out now, she can catch her mother before she heads to work, and Shisui’s easy enough to grab when the academy lets out for the day— “Dinner at mom’s tonight.” 

A tension that she hadn’t noticed goes out of Amano’s shoulders. She could never hate the half-stranger that her best friend has become, but she hates that she’ll have to learn to read him all over again. “I should be done reporting by then,” he says. 

“You’d better be,” Uzume says, and aims another, gentler kick at his ankle, which he lets hit this time. “Otherwise I’ll have to storm the Hokage’s office.” 

“If it takes too long I’ll make sure they know they’re risking an Uchiha on a mission, then.” 

Uzume abandons the dishes on the table for later once Amano leaves — there’s far more important things to do. 

* * *

Amano’s always had a personal space bubble that Uzume… _hasn’t_ always respected, though she’s tried, and it seems to have just increased in size over the years that now have yet to happen. Still, whenever Uzume stands or sits next to Amano, he doesn’t hesitate to lean into her. 

Dinner seemed to go well, despite Amano spending most of it silent and looking between Uzume, Shisui, and Tokimi in a kind of dazed wonder whenever Shisui wouldn’t notice it. Uzume’s mom did, of course — she’s the one who taught Uzume and Amano most of what they know about observing people and it’s at least a hundred years too early for either of them to have a chance of hiding anything from her. 

Uzume had already told her everything she knows about the situation, though, so Tokimi didn’t ask any questions — just shooed Uzume and Amano off to join Shisui when they tried to help with the dishes. 

Shisui catches them up on the current events and dramas of the academy, and Uzume cheerfully volunteers Amano into helping Shisui with his homework as she sits nearby and pets the Perp. 

Listening to Amano quietly helping Shisui is familiar and calming, and Uzume could almost pretend that nothing has changed at all. She can’t, though, so instead she waits until Tokimi has herded a yawning Shisui off to get ready for bed before she pulls out a bottle of awamori and some cups. 

Amano glances up when she returns and raises an eyebrow when he sees the beverage of choice — they usually drink sake or shochu. She raises a challenging eyebrow back but he just shrugs. Not something he feels strongly enough to argue about, then, just commenting. 

They sit and sip in companionable silence. She doesn’t try to force him to talk, because he’s spent the day reporting in. It’s only when his contemplative mood starts to worsen that she aims a kick at his ankle. “So,” Uzume says, “any recruits you’re looking forward to getting again?” 

Amano blinks at her, his startlement obvious, then — slowly — he starts to talk. 

From the number of recruits he names, Circle Team seems to end up as one of the primary training squads in the future, which is good. Amano’s always been better at breaking things down to the basics for people than she is, and honestly — he really should get to be a jounin sensei. He’d be good at it. 

Uzume makes mental notes of the people he mentions, even if the only identifying features he gives are _at most_ the mask they wore and the clan they were from. 

“What, no new Fox masks?” she eventually asks. 

There’s awkward silence for a moment, then Amano says, “The Fox masks… fell out of favor.” She considers that, her nails tapping against her cup. She’s clearly missing part of the story here, but Amano doesn’t expand further. Instead, he changes the subject. “You need to talk to Hatake Kakashi, Uzume.” 

Her good mood shatters. Hatake has had _more_ than long enough to come and talk to her, and he’s never cared enough to do it. “Why should I?” she demands. 

“Because if you don’t,” Amano says with quiet certainty, “no one will _ever_ tell him about the mangekyou.” 

That sends a chill through her. “He gets it?” 

“Yes.” 

Uzume considers his quick answer. “You think he _already_ has it,” she says. 

“I’m almost certain he does,” Amano replies. “He almost dies from chronic chakra exhaustion in the future — he’s been suffering from it since he _got_ the sharingan, Uzume. The moment that he activated the mangekyou, the chakra exhaustion stopped.” 

“Fuck,” Uzume says, and presses a hand over her burning eyes. Amano won’t care if she cries, but she hates it. Hates how it feels, even if she knows it’s not a weakness. 

So. Hatake does care that Obito is dead. Hatake cares _very much_ that Obito is dead. And since Obito had been her heir, since she was the one who said that Hatake could keep Obito’s eye… she’s the only one who has to teach him how to use it. 

No other Uchiha will. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Uzume says again, viciously. “ _Fine_. I’ll do it.” 

Amano bumps his shoulder against hers and silently refills her cup. 

* * *

The last week of September slowly passes without much of note happening. Amano continues reporting in every day, while Uzume works — reluctantly — on tracking down Hatake Kakashi to have a long overdue conversation. 

She doesn’t succeed, because apparently no one has seen him since Nohara Rin’s death, but going out and talking to people means that Uzume is actually up to speed on what is happening in Konoha as it happens instead of only hearing about it over dinner at the earliest. 

Partway through the second day after Amano’s return, there’s a lab accident in one of Orochimaru’s labs, exposing the scientist to the fugu toxin he’d been trying to discover an antidote to — but since the lab in question was designed to be nondisruptive to the area around it, the accident isn’t noticed until long after help was necessary. 

Uzume spends most of that afternoon listening to a couple of chuunin argue over whether it was really an accident or if Mist had somehow successfully gotten an assassin in to kill one of the Sannin, throwing in comments whenever she feels like the argument is starting to get boring. 

A few days after that, Shimura Danzou suffers a fatal heart attack during the night, leaving the Sandaime grieving the loss of his friend. There’s less conspiracy theories about that death, because it’s revealed after the fact that he’d had several heart attacks already. 

And throughout the week, Uzume considers the future. As much as death is something that she lives with, she’s never wanted to consider what her life will be like without the people she cares for — she’s never considered what she would do if something happened to Amano. 

(That’s a lie: she knows exactly what she would do. It involves the mangekyou and a one woman mission — official or not — to destroy everyone and everything involved in his death.) 

Amano might not be spending much more time than usual with Uzume, but she’s aware of it in a way that she wasn’t before. She’s also aware that sooner or later it’s going to come to an end. 

The issue is that Amano is mourning deaths that haven’t happened. The issue is that eventually he’ll be finished reporting in and will start going on missions again. 

The issue is that Amano is still ANBU, and Uzume isn’t. 

On the last day of September, Uzume is ordered to report to the Hokage’s office. 

It’s… _probably_ not a mission briefing, she tells herself. Her crows might be useful for tracking and scouting, but she’s hardly the only choice for those skills. She’s not even the _best_ choice. If it _is_ a mission briefing, though, she’s going to refuse it. She doesn’t care about the insubordination strikes she’ll get on her record because supporting Amano is far more important than that. 

When she arrives, though, it’s to find several people officially in the room in addition to the Hokage: the current head of T&I, the jounin commander… and the ANBU commander. 

Well. This might actually be a mission briefing, but she’s pretty sure that it isn’t one she’s going to turn down. 

The Hokage doesn’t waste time with small talk, he just activates a privacy seal and says, “You’re aware of Hyuuga Amano’s situation. What would it take you to rejoin ANBU?” 

Uzume shifts her weight and crosses her arms. She knows exactly what it would take — it’s something she’s already been contemplating — but she’s not going to start laying out her terms just yet. “Why?” 

“Hyuuga Amano is currently the only person with complete knowledge of the future and the ability to act on it,” Yamanaka Inoichi says, “and we would prefer to keep him that way. Removing him from ANBU would be… unwise.” 

“Unwise,” Uzume echoes. That’s one way to put it, certainly. Amano has always been better the less time he has to spend with his clan, and he has always wanted to be in ANBU. Taking away his dream and putting him back in the general forces, having less chances to avoid his clan… “Do you call the ocean a bit damp, too?” she asks bitterly. 

To her surprise, the Yondaime Hokage winces. “The situation with the caged bird seal _is_ one I’ve been meaning to deal with,” he says, “but until now it’s always seemed less urgent than everything else on my plate.” 

…Well. That’s a condition that she didn’t think was even _possible_ to put on her return, added without her actually prompting it. “First of all, I’d want to be on Amano’s squad.” 

Nara Shikaku nods at that. “From the records I’ve seen, you make an excellent team. Unconventional solutions, at times, but very effective.” 

Zou stirs. “Even though Crow will be your captain, not your teammate?” 

Uzume scoffs. “He’s in command when we run missions together _now_ ,” she says. “If it bothered me, I would have put my name forward to be considered for jounin _well_ before now.” 

“We can do that easily,” the Yondaime says, before anyone else can reply. “Anything else?” 

Maybe it’s not actually a question, but Uzume doesn’t hesitate to continue like it is. “Secondly, the team should be in-village for the foreseeable future.” 

It’s potentially the riskiest of her terms, but it’s also one that is likely to be agreed to. Amano almost certainly has a lot of information that they haven’t yet gotten from him, so of course they should want to keep him close at hand — they won’t want to risk losing him in the field when the still mysterious other time traveller ‘isn’t in a position to act’, whatever that means. 

“Agreed,” the Yondaime says easily. “I’m planning to assign Circle Team to guard duty for at least the next few years. We have a large number of clan heirs being born, after all.” 

Including the Hokage’s own child. Of course. 

…the Hokage’s child, who is due in a couple of weeks. The Hokage’s child — and the child of the _Kyuubi jinchuuriki_. 

The Yondaime had been unavailable, Amano had said, and that was one of the first things that needed changing. There were a couple of weeks until they needed to start changing things, he’d also said. _Fox masks had fallen out of favor_ , he’d said. 

She’s pretty sure that Circle Team is going to be on duty when Kushina gives birth, guarding against whatever had blindsided them in the future Amano remembers. 

“Any other conditions?” the Hokage asks. 

Uzume hesitates before saying, “No, that’s it.” She still hasn’t found Hatake, but with her luck she’ll probably end up running into him in ANBU once she rejoins. 

For a long moment the Yondaime studies her, and then he nods gravely. “Zou,” he says. 

Zou steps forward, pulling a familiar mask from inside his white cloak. “Welcome back to ANBU,” he says neutrally, offering it to her. 

She takes it slowly. It’s the same mask she turned in all those years ago, down to the chip at one temple and the markings she hadn’t bothered to repaint before handing it in. “When do I report for retraining?” Uzume asks, digging in a kunai pouch for the storage scroll she kept there. She’s going to have to add the storage seals she used to use for her ANBU gear, because it would be inconvenient to keep having to unseal and reseal everything whenever she needs it. 

Zou snorts. “It’s clear that you haven’t let your skills go after one spar between you and Crow,” he says. “Circle Team is meeting here in two hours, make sure to see the quartermaster to pick up the rest of your gear before then.” 

Uzume goes. 

* * *

It turns out Zou is right: ANBU stealth and detection is still second nature to her, despite the fact that she hasn’t had to use it officially for years. She’s been using it in every spar against Amano, so of _course_ she’s practiced in it. 

Her freshly repainted mask sits comfortably on her face as Uzume waits with two other ANBU members in the Hokage’s office, waiting for Amano — no, _Crow-taicho_ , she needs to remember that — to arrive for their briefing. 

Her other teammates are Lark and Wolf. Lark is a willowy blonde that Uzume thinks might be a Yamanaka, while Wolf… Wolf is so _obviously_ Hatake Kakashi that she could kick him and the Hokage. Didn’t they have the sense to know that he should be wearing a hood to conceal that recognizable shock of silver hair? 

Well. Even if she's not ready to talk to him yet, she at least knows where to find him now. 

Crow doesn’t hesitate or even seem surprised at her appearance when he enters, so he probably cheated and looked ahead with the byakugan — or maybe he was told that her mask was active again. 

The briefing goes as Uzume expects: Circle Team is going to be guarding Uzumaki Kushina during birth, and then they will be on long term guard duty of Kushina and her child afterwards. 

Once the briefing is over, Crow-taicho leads them to one of the ANBU training grounds. “I’ve worked with all of you individually,” he says, “but we’ll need to get used to working together. Expect to report daily for more sparring. Lark, Wolf, begin. The winner will spar with Fox afterwards.” 

She goes and stands next to Crow to wait her turn. She isn’t surprised that he doesn’t bring up the fact that she rejoined ANBU until much later, after Uzume has sparred Wolf and then Lark, after their team is dismissed and the other two scatter, after they take off their masks and Crow becomes Amano again. 

Even then, it’s hours later when he finally brings it up. “You left ANBU,” he says. It’s not actually a question, but she can tell what he isn’t asking anyway: why? Why return? Why now? 

“I didn’t have something I could only do in ANBU then,” Uzume replies. And then because Amano has never seemed to consider himself as someone worthy of care, she continues jokingly, “This way you can point me at people who deserve punching for things they haven’t done yet.” 

Amano shakes his head and laughs. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [where past and future are gathered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938999) by [DawningStar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar)




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